Last night Barbara Corcoran cooked Scott Durkin, the newly named president of New York City brokerage Douglas Elliman, his favorite dish -- a pot roast -- to celebrate his promotion.
She joked with her protege of many years at the Corcoran Group: "I hope you don’t mind, but I'm going to take all the credit for this. I groomed you to get you here."
Durkin was happy to agree. Corcoran tapped him on the shoulder, or cornered him in the swimming pool to be precise, in 1991 and said the agent should forget sales and come into the executive offices.
Prior to that Durkin had a hotel career with the Four Seasons; he was the assistant manager of The Pierre in New York before starting in real estate in the early 1990s and, under Corcoran, rose to COO and managing director of the Corcoran Group's Chelsea-Flatiron office, which ranked in the top 10 of all Realogy companies during his 11 years there.
He was also a key player in the sale of the Corcoran Group to Realogy-owned NRT i...